


Something wrong with MACUSA

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Dark, M/M, This is one of those, except the end bit, ghost!Graves, the movie doesn't go like that, you know those movie run-throughs but things are slightly different?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 20:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15202475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: There’s something wrong with MACUSA. Something out of sync, something that little bit on edge, something… wrong.No one seems to notice.





	Something wrong with MACUSA

There’s something wrong with MACUSA. Something out of sync, something that little bit on edge, something… wrong.

Newt walks through the vaulted halls with Tina tugging impatiently on his elbow and it brushes icy fingers down his cheek. Tangles in his hair, catching his head and making him turn to look. Slips around his ankles and pulls at his feet as though it could carry him away.

Tina looks back at him, mouth set in a hard line and eyebrow raised, and he hurries to catch up. Something winds through the fingers she’s gripped around Newt’s arm, cold and sharp and insistent and -

There’s something wrong with MACUSA, but no one’s noticed. Newt hesitates a second too long, gaze flicking that little bit too far to the left where no one’s waiting to catch his eye, shoulders twitching in an involuntary shiver when it hovers curiously around his neck. He notices. He schools his expression to hide it, but. He notices. And it notices him.

He keeps his attention locked on Tina, his hands clutching tightly at his case but not tightly enough to be suspicious, and pretends he doesn’t see it. It floods over his eyes and fills his mouth, stoppers his nose and suffocates him, but in reality there’s nothing there and Newt keeps his breathing steady. He nods in appropriate places and signs on the dotted lines so Tina can process his wand permit, stands awkwardly to one side when she tries to hide from Abernathy, allows the rush of actions and conversations flow over him, and pretends he can’t feel the air scraping against his frozen lungs as it coils in his chest and waits.

Tina presents his case to Director Graves. The man flicks him a dismissive look and Newt’s heart stutters as something seethes with rage. He hunches in on himself and remembers to breath.

Then Graves opens the case and inside are pastries, the muggle’s pastries, and Tina drags him out to find the muggle that took his case and Newt smiles winningly at her and admits that it may have been open,  _just a smidge,_  and everything happens too fast to think about MACUSA’s something wrong.

In the court room, Graves holds out his hand and Newt’s case flies into it and something rises black and ugly in his thoughts and snarls at the thief for daring to take –

“Tina,” he says carefully, leaning against the walls of the holding cell and trying not to acknowledge it. “Have you noticed something different in MACUSA recently?”

She throws him an aggravated look and thinks he’s talking about something else. It curls around his wrists and tries to pull on his hands, straightens the fingers out to bend them into shapes. Newt slides balled fists into his pocket and thinks, as loudly as he dares, that it should leave him alone because there’s nothing he can do to help. It shushes him soothingly and rests on his knuckles like a lover’s kiss.

It winds around his neck when he sits across the table from Graves, curling up into the bone of his jaw, teases out the jagged edges of his teeth. He tilts his head down to hide their sharp points and mumbles, but he’s not even sure if the others could see the change either way. Graves brings the obscurus in with a wave of his hand and there’s a moment of puzzled confusion, then memories, pictures,  _knowledge_  flying through his mind. He relives four months spent promising a child he could help and failing to deliver; they flick past in lightning seconds.

And… there is sympathy, perhaps. A faded echo of his own grief, a malevolent watchfulness as it coils around him and snarls in his mind at the witches who lead him away. It reaches for his hands again, lengthening his fingernails to claws, and sinks into the bones as though it could lift his hands up for him and strike –

Newt keeps his fists clenched until blood runs down his wrists from the claws that don’t exist. Pickett frees him and he frees Tina and they run through the halls to where Queenie has freed Jacob, and the swooping evil takes down one of the aurors chasing them but two more stumble and fall and no one notices.

No one notices.

Queenie asks him about Leta and Newt screams his thoughts about something wrong in MACUSA and Queenie tells him he needs a giver, not a taker, and  _no one notices._ It settles in his mind and curls around his fear and cradles it, hushes it, smothers it, until Newt’s hands shake and he buries his fingers in Frank’s feathers as though clinging on for his life and begs it to stop but it won’t.

Any icy touch runs over the scars on his back and promises him retribution, promises him he doesn’t have to be afraid again, promises him no one will hurt him again, and Newt hides under Frank’s wings and tells himself like a mantra that there’s something wrong with him, even if no one has noticed.

It drips down his spine in patient indulgence and traces the arch of his hips beneath his coat, and not even Frank’s Arizonan sun is enough to keep Newt warm.

Then - the obscurus, tearing through the city; the rush of apparition, of running, of chasing and finding and helping. It simmers, watchful and suspicious while he tries to talk Credence down; it rises in a vengeful wave when Graves holds his wand on Newt and makes him writhe; it floods into the floor and the ceiling and the walls and vines grow from every surface with poison dripping from their flailing thorns –

Newt screams –

The tendrils hover over Graves, spit and call him thief and murderer, and in the corner Credence backs away and dissolves in fear and there’s  _something wrong with MACUSA_  –

Newt opens his magic to it and it solidifies into existence. For a long, drawn out moment there are two Graves. The one in his sharp suit steps back in horror, the other grins through the blood running down his face, and the shadows swarm with gaping maws behind him.

When Newt wakes, he is carried in someone’s arms. His magic is a pitiful wisp at the bottom of his reserves, flickering out as soon as it regenerates, and the hands that hold him are cold like carved marble. He can see the rain hitting the pavement and the headlights of the cars driving past, but he doesn’t know where he is. He can’t see the man that carries him.

“Shh,” the man whispers to him, brushing his hair out of his face with a tendril of inky shadow. It leaves a tacky smear, something cloying and sweet, and when Newt gasps for air nothing rattles through his hollow chest. He’s cold. The world fades in and out and his magic is draining into the dead man that carries him, there’s rain hitting the pavement but Newt feels nothing against his skin, the muggles drive past in their cars and hurry past in their coats and Graves - the real Graves - carries Newt through the crowds with darkness swirling around his feet.

There’s something wrong in New York city, and it cradles Newt against its chest like a precious thing and coaxes him back to sleep.

No one notices.


End file.
